World War I and Later
By the time of the First World War, many of the Endicott and Taft era forts had become obsolete due to the increased range and accuracy of naval weaponry and the advent of aircraft. In the 1920s and 1930s, most U.S. coast defense facilities were put on "maintenance" status, a type of "mothballing." In the late 1930s and early 1940s, a new program of construction added huge 16-inch gun batteries, as well as rapid-firing 6-inch and 90 mm guns guns (for use against motor torpedo boats) to many harbors' defenses, and large fields of submarine mines were still being deployed as well. But as it became clearer that the U.S. was unlikely to face seaborne attack, these defenses were largely discontinued (by 1945), and were decommissioned altogether after 1946.
Read more about this topic: Board Of Fortifications
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or war:
“Destroy yourselves, you who are desperate, and you who are tortured in body and soul, abandon all hope. There is no more solace for you in this world. The world lives off your rotting flesh.”
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)
“The truth is, the whole administration under Roosevelt was demoralized by the system of dealing directly with subordinates. It was obviated in the State Department and the War Department under [Secretary of State Elihu] Root and me [Taft was the Secretary of War], because we simply ignored the interference and went on as we chose.... The subordinates gained nothing by his assumption of authority, but it was not so in the other departments.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)